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Silliman's Blog
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<p class='description'><span>A weblog focused on contemporary poetry and poetics.</span></p>
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<h2 class='date-header'><span>Saturday, October 18, 2003</span></h2>

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<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Last night,
30 of us &#8211; 17 men &amp; 13 women &#8211; sat in a circle &amp; read our poems to one
another. It&#8217;s great to see some people who are very dear to me, like Erica Hunt
&amp; James Sherry, as well as to meet others, such as John Koethe, for the
very first time. Today is the main day of the retreat itself. Here is the last
of the six questions we were given to contemplate:<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;
margin-left:.5in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial'>Can
poetry challenge militarized language and propaganda? Are textual critique,
parody, and satire adequate responses or do they reify these abuses?<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Let&#8217;s think
about this:<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.25in;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo2;
tab-stops:list .25in'><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Symbol;mso-fareast-font-family:Symbol;mso-bidi-font-family:Symbol'><span
style='mso-list:Ignore'>&#168;<span style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>No
one has spoken or written with more passion &amp; commitment to the concept of
a &#8220;man standing by his word&#8221; than has Ezra Pound, a fascist paranoid
schizophrenic. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.5in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.25in;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo2;
tab-stops:list .25in'><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Symbol;mso-fareast-font-family:Symbol;mso-bidi-font-family:Symbol'><span
style='mso-list:Ignore'>&#168;<span style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>The
term <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>avant-garde</i>, the 200-year-old
literary tradition with which many of this blog&#8217;s readers have some
identification,<i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'> </i>has its origins in
military strategy.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.5in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.25in;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo2;
tab-stops:list .25in'><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Symbol;mso-fareast-font-family:Symbol;mso-bidi-font-family:Symbol'><span
style='mso-list:Ignore'>&#168;<span style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>A
substantial portion of Americans still believe that<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.5in;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l0 level2 lfo2;
tab-stops:list .5in'><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Wingdings;mso-fareast-font-family:Wingdings;mso-bidi-font-family:
Wingdings'><span style='mso-list:Ignore'>&#167;<span style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Saddam
Hussein and Al Qaeda were in cahoots with one another<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.5in;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l0 level2 lfo2;
tab-stops:list .5in'><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Wingdings;mso-fareast-font-family:Wingdings;mso-bidi-font-family:
Wingdings'><span style='mso-list:Ignore'>&#167;<span style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><st1:country-region><st1:place><span
  style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Iraq</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'> possessed weapons of mass
destruction<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.5in;text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l0 level2 lfo2;
tab-stops:list .5in'><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Wingdings;mso-fareast-font-family:Wingdings;mso-bidi-font-family:
Wingdings'><span style='mso-list:Ignore'>&#167;<span style='font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><st1:country-region><st1:place><span
  style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Iraq</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'> presented a clear &amp; present
danger to the </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style='font-size:
  10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>US</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Can my
linebreak here or a little heightened irony there undo the damage of the entire
military-industrial complex, the concentration of news sources into the hands
of a few giant rapacious corporations &amp; the world domination politik of the
Bush regime? What&#8217;s wrong with this picture?<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>In fact,
poetry can function &#8211; indeed it does function &#8211; as an underground railroad of
the mind, a mechanism for opening up critical thought concerning all kinds of
issues, &#8220;militarized language and propaganda&#8221; included. Poetry does
experientially what something like George <span class=SpellE>Lakoff&#8217;s</span>
reframing project does critically &amp; both are certainly needed in today&#8217;s
world. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Even more
important are the ways in which the arts figure change &amp; transformation,
dynamics that might be applied more broadly social. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>None of
these, however, is sufficient. There is no way to halt the depredation of the
Bush regime without, in fact, taking the presidency away from the Republican
party. Given that this party will stop at nothing to seize power &#8211; rig a
Supreme Court vote, recall a newly elected governor, redraw congressional
districts well outside of the normal guidelines &#8211; this will not be an easy
task. But it is one that can be accomplished. However, this will not occur
through improved tropes <span class=GramE>nor</span> higher caliber flarf, even
in the <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>New York Times, </i>but solely
through political action. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>I have
written before &#8211; and I will reiterate the point here &#8211; that I don&#8217;t think that
a member of Congress, including a senator, can ever beat a sitting president &#8211;
the U.S. has only had one senator directly elected to the presidency in its
entire history*, though senators traditionally clog the nomination process. For
the Democrats in the </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span
  style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>U.S.</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>, this leaves very few options. The
only credible ones are <a href="http://www.deanforamerica.com/">Howard Dean</a>
&amp; <a href="http://www.clark04.com/">General Clark</a>. It may be ironic
that </span><st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Clark</span></st1:place><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'> should be more credible as an
outsider than Dennis Kucinich, but that is inherent in the structure of
American politics more than in the positions of the two men. Between Clark
&amp; Dean, I am persuaded that Dean represents the more progressive
alternative &#8211; he has a record of consistency that, while not perfect, is far
better than Clark&#8217;s** &#8211; and his grassroots approach to fundraising, done in
good part through the internet and &#8220;<a href="http://dean2004.meetup.com/"><span
class=SpellE>meetup</span></a>,&#8221; promises to narrow the traditional Republican
fundraising advantage. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>I point
this out to note that the way to challenge &amp; defeat &#8220;militarized language
&amp; propaganda&#8221; is not through poetry, but through same political action a
steelworker or waitress might take. The idea that poetry is in this sense a
different practice strikes me as a genre-based mode of megalomania. If poets
are serious about taking on the forces of darkness, the avenues for action are
plentiful. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Arial'>* JFK in
1960, with no incumbent and against VP Richard Nixon, in an election that
depended on fraud in the city of </span><st1:City><st1:place><span
  style='font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Chicago</span></st1:place></st1:City><span
style='font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Arial'>. Eight years later, Nixon would run
as an outsider, beating a man who had been VP for just a single term after a
long career in the Senate. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Arial'>** Tho it is
worth noting here that the ideal ticket may be Dean-Clark. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<h2 class='date-header'><span>Friday, October 17, 2003</span></h2>

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<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>This
next-to-last question for the Poetry &amp; Empire retreat is unique in that it
has literary implications:<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;
margin-left:.5in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial'>Do
genre models (lyric, pastoral) and other established modes of practice need to be
re-articulated in light of changing modes of dissemination and the new dynamics
of global/transpersonal culture and economy?<br style='mso-special-character:
line-break'>
<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br style='mso-special-character:line-break'>
<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>I mentioned
yesterday that the dramatic monolog &#8211; one of the three innovations of 19<sup>th</sup>
century poetry, alongside the prose poem &amp; free verse &#8211; was generated in a
world that lacked both electricity &amp; indoor plumbing. Generally speaking, I
think you can hear that in all three. The shift towards a poetics of
polyvocality &amp; palimpsest, which in the 20<sup>th</sup> century can be
found in Pound, Joyce, Williams, Stein, &amp; so many others, itself becomes
widely used as a writing strategy in a world in which the so-called Great War
is in everybody&#8217;s mind. Even the new sentence can be traced back to the days of
the Carter </span><st1:PersonName><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:
 Arial'>admin</span></st1:PersonName><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:
Arial'>istration, back when the only personal computer you could buy was the
Heath Kit build-it-yourself system sold in the back pages of journals like <i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Popular Mechanics. </i>In popular music, the
historic equivalent of William Carlos Williams&#8217; <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:
normal'>Spring &amp; All </i>is Bing Crosby, whose great technical innovation
was the recognition that if you had a mike, you didn&#8217;t need to sing at the top
of your lungs. The New American poets were adamant about their love of bebop.
And it&#8217;s hardly an accident that language poetry arose a decade after the
transformation of pop music by Dylan, the Beatles, Stones &amp; the so-called
San Francisco Sound demonstrated how an institution such as Tin Pan Alley could
be overthrown.*<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>So where is
the poetics of the Justin Timberlake generation? <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>I know
that&#8217;s cruel, but the point I want to use it to make is that certain parallel
cultural institutions may well be in far worse shape than contemporary poetry
when it comes to their ability to comment on &amp; intervene in the real world.
Capital concentrates &amp; art forms that depend on it have generally seen that
consolidating effect. Poetry to some degree has been buffered precisely by its
economic marginality. That remains an important asset which we would all be
advised to preserve. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span class=GramE><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:
Arial'>Having said that, I want to be clear that as a poet my interests are
linguistic.</span></span><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>
Those poets whose solution to literary development is to shift away from the
terrain of poetry altogether, whether to intermedia, vizpo, flash programming
and the like seem to me not to be addressing the issue, but rather sidestepping
it <span class=GramE>altogether.</span> That really seems no different from
poets picking up electric guitars thirty years ago &#8211; thank you Jim Carroll,
Patti Smith, Laurie Anderson, Jessica Hagedorn, David Meltzer et al &#8211; or
perhaps somebody a generation earlier reading aloud to a saxophone or
keyboards. It&#8217;s not an attempt to innovate <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>through
</i>language, but alongside language, using language as a supplement to
whatever. When </span><st1:PersonName><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:
 Arial'>Lewis LaCook</span></st1:PersonName><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'> asks, in <a
href="http://www.sidereality.com/volume2issue4/interviewsv2n4/interviewwithnickpiombino.htm">his
interview</a> this week with </span><st1:PersonName><span style='font-size:
 10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Nick Piombino</span></st1:PersonName><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'> in the new <span class=SpellE><i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>sidereality</i></span><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:
normal'>, </i>&#8220;Will Ron Silliman write code?&#8221; he might as well ask, Will Ron
Silliman take up trombone? They strike me as equivalently pertinent. Code may
be a language in the sense that algebra might be one &#8211; it is a functional
system &#8211; but hardly in the sense of <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>langue
</i>&amp; <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>parole. </i>Indeed, I have a
strong sense that the more one mucks around with all the available toys, the
less likely it is one will in fact address the problem directly, which is in
the form of the poem itself.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Actually,
Nick &amp; Lewis entertain the idea that blogging itself may represent such an
innovation of <span class=GramE>form, that</span> the blog has at least the
potential to function as a genre. Obviously, betwixt, say, I and </span><st1:PersonName><span
 style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Jim Behrle</span></st1:PersonName><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>, there is a lot of room for
variety. My own sense is that blogging comes closer to some of the social
aspects of the reading than it does to the poem &#8211; at least the reading as it
exists in some scenes some of the time (I&#8217;m think explicitly of The Grand Piano
as I write that), a circumstance in which people can collectively &amp;
intensely explore issues of mutual interest. The blog does a better job of
creating this aspect than does the listserv. It is certainly the case that one
can pursue a serious intellectual project, such as Michael Magee&#8217;s <i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>My Angie Dickinson </i>or even something
less formal (tho no less serious), like Jonathan Mayhew&#8217;s reading of <i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>A Test of Poetry. </i>But there is also a
lot of room in the process for just chitchat, which is also an integral part of
poetry&#8217;s infrastructure. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>More
serious examples of the kinds of change we need to heed &amp; explore further,
it would seem, would be genres like <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>flarf</i>
&#8211; the deliberately disposable poem, written to identify an intuitive sense of
badness &#8211; and devices like <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Google
sculpting</i> (Magee&#8217;s project is exemplary). Why these developments now is an
important question. And if I were teaching writing, I&#8217;d probably focus more on
these than on, say, the villanelle. I&#8217;ll go further and argue that were I a
student, I would distrust a teacher who didn&#8217;t include them on the syllabus<span
class=GramE>.*</span>* This doesn&#8217;t mean necessarily that I want to use either
myself for my own poetry &#8211; tho it also doesn&#8217;t preclude it -- but I do think I
need to operate in a world that recognizes their implications both for poetry
&amp; for history. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Arial'>* Even more
to the point, language poetry could never have occurred without the war in </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span
  style='font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Viet Nam</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span
style='font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Arial'> &amp; the draft in the </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span
  style='font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Arial'>United States</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span
style='font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Arial'>, which is why in good part so-called
language poetry from the </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span
  style='font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Arial'>U.K.</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span
style='font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Arial'> or </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span
  style='font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Canada</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span
style='font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Arial'> never quite fits. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Arial'>** Students
should always distrust their teachers. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<h2 class='date-header'><span>Thursday, October 16, 2003</span></h2>

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<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>If you have
read the questions for the Poetry &amp; Empire retreat from the past three
days, this one should not surprise you:<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;
margin-left:.5in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial'>To what
degree do our local actions as poets and teachers affect larger contexts,
including national and international ones?<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>I have no
question whatsoever that both teaching &amp; writing poetry creates something
akin to an underground railroad of the mind, enabling other people down the
line, whether our students or readers or students &amp; readers not yet born,
to think critically. That and 37 cents will enable me to post a letter.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>The much
more important question to my mind &#8211; and I&#8217;m beginning to understand that I
what I think needs to be done with these questions is not to reiterate the
platitudes of the past but rather to turn these questions inside out, the way
one might a t-shirt &#8211; would seem to me to be what is the impact of larger
context on our actions as poets &amp; teachers. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Let me
state <span class=GramE>this another</span> way. Capitalism, for better or
worse, is grounded upon the instability of markets, let alone individual institutions
&amp; products. IBM in the year 2100 will be as utterly different from what it
is today as this same corporation is from the <a
href="http://www.computer-museum.org/collections/hollerith.html">Tabulating
Machine Company</a>, manufacturer of the Hollerith punch card, of 1900. The
same holds true of Microsoft, GE, <span class=GramE>any</span> corporation you
care to name. Further, the acceleration of change at the level of a commercial
institution has been going on for some time. The wild west character of the dot
com boom of the 1990s was not an aberration &#8211; indeed, even its short-lived
nature underscores the direction of historic particulars.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Yet most
forms of the anti-globalization movement, to cite a countervailing effort, are
predicated on preserving certain relationships in a steady state or even
returning them to a prior one. There is an almost 100 percent predictable
outcome with that kind of strategy, insofar as it has prevailed not once over
the past 200 years. I&#8217;m not just making the point here that the dramatic
monolog, that great 19<sup>th</sup> century innovation, is a form that was
generated by a world that did not yet have electricity or indoor plumbing &#8211; tho
that&#8217;s certainly true also &#8211; but rather that the left within which many poets
seek to work continues to organize around forms that are very nearly as retro.
The result, predictable enough, is increasing marginalization as both the
nation &amp; the world system move ever rightward.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>It is in
this sense that I sometimes think that the most outré genres &amp; the most
out-there genres often offer the greatest value &#8211; they simply offer alternative
modes of reality as possible, as options. This may be why I am particularly
disturbed at the recent trend among the cyberpunk novelists to look backwards,
to write about World War 2, 19<sup>th</sup> century British science &amp;
similar historical contexts. It is as if they are announcing that we cannot
change the future unless &amp; until we change a past that has already escaped
us. That&#8217;s a grim prospect.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>There is
organization against capitalism as a force, and there is organization against
capitalism&#8217;s anti-democratic tendencies. These strike me as two very different
projects. The first is not at all unlike organizing against gravity as a force.
The great problem that the communist movement never could overcome was that it
was predicated on a particular mode of capital organization, the industrial
factory, while in fact capital is not organized on any given state of
production, but rather on the constant destruction of whatever the existing
state happens to be in order to replace it with one that is, in capitalist
terms, more efficient. Whatever success the forces for democracy, peace &amp;
justice might have cannot come through attempting to halt such forces, but
rather to use them, to direct to whatever degree possible the evolution of this
engine of innovation.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>The
utopianism of some of the dot com futurists was over the top in its excessive
optimism. But what that social tendency had right was its presumption that the
most powerful force for directing society was not to halt change, but rather to
take the reigns of production, precisely by redefining them. One won&#8217;t defeat for
long something such as genetically modified foods through legislation, but one
could do so through the creation of corporations <span class=GramE>that
successfully outperform</span> the biotech farming conglomerates. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>There are,
of course, a variety of different ways one can define &#8220;successfully outperform&#8221;
as anyone who has read the work of the likes of <a
href="http://www.chatham.edu/rci/well/women11-20/lappe.html">Francis Moore <span
class=SpellE>Lappe</span></a> or <a
href="http://www.nadir.org/nadir/initiativ/agp/free/bello/">Walden <span
class=SpellE>Bello</span></a> on the impact of western &#8220;aid&#8221; on Third World
agricultural production will be aware. But that is the nexus of where political
struggle can make some difference, in slowing down the devastation through
which the so-called developing world finds itself ever further behind the
developed one. Such organizing efforts, however, amount to band-aids on severed
arteries without the other side of the coin. The failure of the most recent WTO
talks in </span><st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Cancun</span></st1:place><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'> came about precisely because
western nations were unwilling to surrender the price supports and subsidies
that make such anachronisms as American farming competitive. In point of fact,
the anti-globalization movement eventually will have to take on the American
farmer as a disproportionate political force if it hopes to have an impact of
the quality of life not just in </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span
  style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Malaysia</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'> or </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span
  style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Cameroon</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>, but in Tulsa &amp; Darby &amp; </span><st1:City><st1:place><span
  style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Camden</span></st1:place></st1:City><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>. The power of the farmer is
hardwired into the American system through institutions such as the U.S.
Senate, which gives </span><st1:State><st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
  font-family:Arial'>California</span></st1:place></st1:State><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'> just two votes although it has a
population equal to over 20 other states combined. In practice, this means that
such things as biotech corn &amp; cyborg beef have something akin to 40 votes
in hand on any issue they want, not only price supports, but gun control, tax
fairness, a woman&#8217;s right to choose, a gay person&#8217;s right to marry. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Nowhere in
this ensemble of forces is the coalition of capital more vulnerable than at its
core, its own impulse to drive toward a steady state constructed around currently
existing relationships of power &#8211; everyone presently in power would love for
capitalism&#8217;s game of musical chairs to end right now &#8211; and that is its
presumption that its own method of creating something such as food for profit
cannot be trumped. Develop a process that brings food to market better, faster
&amp; cheaper and the entire system unravels. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>This is
true for virtually every issue in which capitalism plays some part, which means
virtually every issue at all. The question that a progressive coalition has yet
to address is how to beat capitalism at its own game, how to take charge of the
kinds of innovation that make a difference. Mere Ben &amp; Jerry capitalism is
not enough. And I frankly don&#8217;t know if this is a challenge to which the
progressive coalition as currently constituted is capable of addressing. But I
do know that if it is not, then band-aids for severed arteries is the best we
will ever have &amp; no amount of holding hands &amp; singing <i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>We Shall Overcome</i> will make up the
difference. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>So I look
to alternative realms &#8211; the arts in general are such &#8211; as models, even as
laboratories for figuring new modes of action. Just as the history of
literature is not the catalog of the best or most well written works but rather
the history of literary change, I look at how the arts figure the struggles
over change in their own dimensions. Do they demonstrate how dramatically a
form can be &amp; must be reconceived for every generation, are they a model
for innovation predicated upon anything other than greed? There are artists
&amp; art forms &amp; art movements for which I would in fact answer that
affirmatively. <a
href="http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/g_l/grahn/grahn.htm">Judy Grahn</a>,
whose work I invoked Monday, virtually invented the idea of a women&#8217;s audience
as such. We see Grahn&#8217;s impact everywhere from the post-New Narrative ventures
of a Kathy Lou Schultz to Oprah&#8217;s network of book clubs. Let me say this again
in another way so that I won&#8217;t be misunderstood: the wealth &amp; political
power that are implicit in the Oprah Winfrey model of book clubs can at least
in part be traced back directly to <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Edward
the Dyke. </i>People have been awarded the Nobel Prize for a lot less. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>So, yes,
absolutely, our actions as poets have impact. None more important than our
relationship to change. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<h2 class='date-header'><span>Wednesday, October 15, 2003</span></h2>

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<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Here is the
third question from the series given for the Poetry &amp; Empire retreat:<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;
margin-left:.5in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana'>How do the structures of poetic
communities resist or reinforce existing categories of power and influence?<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>In &#8220;The
Political Economy of Poetry,&#8221; which you can find in <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:
normal'><a href="http://www.roofbooks.com/Book/index.cfm?GCOI=93780100484640">The
New Sentence</a> </i>&#8211; still in print &amp; available through <a
href="http://www.spdbooks.org/">SPD</a> &#8211; I attempted to sketch out an idea
that <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;
margin-left:.5in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align:justify'><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial'>the
social organization of contemporary poetry occurs in two primary structures:
the <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>network </i>and the <i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>scene. </i>The scene is specific to a place.
A network, by definition, is transgeographic. Neither mode ever exists in a
pure form. Networks typically involve scene subgroupings, while many scenes (although
not all) build toward network formations. Individuals may, and often do, belong
to more than one of these informal organizations at a time. Both types are
essentially fluid and fragile. . . . <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;
margin-left:.5in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align:justify'><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial'><span
style='mso-tab-count:1'>&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; </span>Critical to the distinction between
these structures are the methods of communication available to their members. .
. . Because capital, of which there is so little in poetry, is necessary for
the elements of network formation, competition exists between networks and
scenes. Underneath <span class=GramE>lies</span> a hidden assumption of the
hierarchical ordering of these groups, and the idea that one can be the
dominant or hegemonic formation according to some definition, at least for a
period of time. Definitions vary, but major components include monetary
rewards, prestige (often called influence), and the capacity to have one&#8217;s work
permanently in print and being taught.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>In the 22
years since I first published those words simultaneously in <i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E </i>&amp; <i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Open Letter, </i>I have never had occasion
to doubt the broader strokes of that very general description. One could take a
look at a wide range of literary social phenomena under these terms. The New
Brutalists, for example, could be viewed as a scene (younger post-avant poets
in the Bay Area) with some network connections, especially to writers in
Massachusetts, although I suppose one could take a much narrower genealogical
view (former writing students from Mills) as well. Flarf, on the other hand,
seems primarily a network phenomenon. As does poetry blogging. [Does poetry
blogging have scene implications? It seems quite prevalent among younger
writers in the Bay Area, </span><st1:City><st1:place><span style='font-size:
  10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Boston</span></st1:place></st1:City><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'> &amp; </span><st1:State><st1:place><span
  style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>New York</span></st1:place></st1:State><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>, much less so here in Philly &amp;
less still in such locales as </span><st1:City><st1:place><span
  style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>San Diego</span></st1:place></st1:City><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'> or DC.] <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>To the
person who is certain to write &amp; ask if the advent of the Internet has
transformed or eliminated the need for capital as a prerequisite for a network,
the answer is &#8220;only partly.&#8221; The number of the world&#8217;s people who have access
to the web on a daily basis is still something like three percent. More common
than the <span class=SpellE>flarfer</span> working a day job in a marketing
agency in </span><st1:City><st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:
  Arial'>Manhattan</span></st1:place></st1:City><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'> is the central Asian nomad. So, yes, it is possible to
establish a network of some sort at a far lower cost in 2003 than in 1981, but
really only in the so-called </span><st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
 font-family:Arial'>First World</span></st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>. A far more important question &#8211; not one that I&#8217;m ready to
handle in any depth here &#8211; is how the establishment of a network changes the
formation itself. Of the 180 or so poets &amp; poetry related blogs listed on
my blogroll to the left, for example, there are exactly 28 by people* whom I
either read previously or at least knew through their activity in some other
poetry realm, such as a listserv. <span class=GramE>Which means that over 150
of these poetry bloggers, over 80 percent, are new to my experience within the
last 15 months.</span> <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>The question
posed above for the retreat, however, isn&#8217;t one of how are communities
structured, but rather one of how the structure of communities &#8220;resist or
reinforce existing categories of power and influence.&#8221; And here I think the
answer is obvious: structures don&#8217;t, but people might. The implication of the
question is that possibly certain scenes have different rules of composition,
but I frankly don&#8217;t see the evidence for this. The organizational structure of
Official Verse Culture may have a lot of institutional resources, for example,
but it is a network much like any other. They might as well write flarf
(actually, they do, for the most part, but just don&#8217;t know it). The structure
of the community itself is not what determines behavior, but rather how the individuals
involved seek to obtain &amp; use power. Power is something that people almost
universally seek to obtain &#8211; it is as valuable as oxygen &amp; for many of the
same reasons. &amp; yet power, as anyone who reads Foucault with a practical
mind must realize, fulfills its potential only when you give it away. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Here one
does see a difference between communities &#8211; some hoard power, while others
don&#8217;t &#8211; but not necessarily between the internal structures of community as
such. I&#8217;m not going reiterate here what has been documented repeatedly in Jed <span
class=SpellE>Rasula&#8217;s</span> <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>American
Poetry Wax Museum</i>, in Hank <span class=SpellE>Lazar&#8217;s</span> <i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Opposing Poetries</i>, elsewhere in my own
writing &amp; in that of </span><st1:PersonName><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
 font-family:Arial'>Charles Bernstein</span></st1:PersonName><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>. But much of what is done in
literature to replicate the social struggles of the society as a whole are done
not in the name of those struggles per se, but rather using a discourse of
quality, combined with institutions that are themselves only coincidentally
literary. The purpose of the National Book Critics Circle Award, to pick the
most visibly egregious, is to propagate the idea that newspaper reviews, in
particular, might identify and establish a basis for moving retail merchandise.
Functionally, the purpose of the Pulitzer is no different &#8211; it gains whatever
prestige it has not from the value of the selections, which for both fiction
and poetry have more often been just silly than not, but from the fact that,
since the Pulitzer&#8217;s particular heritage is as an award for newspapers &amp;
print journalists, it gets well covered by print media. The hundreds, if not
thousands, of poets whose work appears in chapbooks and small press editions
that lack the kind of advertising budgets the trade presses have thus are
simply outside of the picture of such processes, unless of course one is
brought into it as an explicit token of openness. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></i></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Arial'><span
style='mso-spacerun:yes'>&#160;</span>* I know the folks responsible for a somewhat
larger percentage of the non-poetry blogs listed, such as Michael Goldhaber who
was writing about technology back when I edited the <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:
normal'>Socialist Review. </i>His newsletter format then has transformed into a
blog today. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<h2 class='date-header'><span>Tuesday, October 14, 2003</span></h2>

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<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>A second
question those of us participating in the retreat have been asked to consider
is the following:<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;
margin-left:.5in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana'>What underlying ethical, social,
and political values inform our practices as poets and poetry teachers? How can
we pursue our knowledge of such values?<br style='mso-special-character:line-break'>
<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br style='mso-special-character:line-break'>
<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>How to make
sense of an art form that encompasses not only the politics of Pablo Neruda
&amp; Ho Chi Minh, but Ezra Pound? That was in many respects the first medium,
the first profession, to embrace the lives of gays &amp; lesbians, from Sappho
to Whitman to Stein &amp; yet also included a professional homophobe like Eli
Siegel? The current head of the NEA is a poet, a registered Republican, who
just in the past week talked to Terry Gross on <a
href="http://freshair.npr.org/day_fa.jhtml?display=day&amp;todayDate=10/07/2003">Fresh
Air</a> of the importance of bringing art to the masses in a way that does not
condescend to them while at the same time promoting a massive tour of plays by
a British writer of 400 years ago in what must be the most condescending spoon
feeding of Kulchur in the 37-year history of that agency, funded by no less
than the Defense Department. William Logan, the closest thing there is to a
house poet &amp; poet-critic at <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>The New
Criterion, </i>the most programmatically reactionary cultural magazine in the
language, has work in the September 22<sup>nd</sup> issue of <i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>The Nation. </i><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>The form of
a retreat itself, an internal discussion of peers behind closed doors, a mode
most closely associated in 2003 with the World Trade Organization &amp;
parallel international organizations, is itself an interesting albeit
problematic form through which to contemplate such things. Poets have been
known to appreciate irony &amp; I hope we appreciate that one. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>But what
really strikes me about these questions is the degree to which the one above
could have been asked in exactly this format in 1970. It is perhaps the most
depressing aspect &#8211; or should I say prospect &#8211; of this retreat. There is not
one thing in this list of questions that could not have been asked as easily &#8211;
indeed far more easily &#8211; 30+ years ago. More than anything this tells me (1)
that either there are <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>no </i>good answers
or, worse, (2) that whatever answers poets have given to date have been shown
to be inadequate. Why else keep beating your forehead against the same brick
wall?<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>I think it
is clear that poetic form is morally neutral &#8211; it is as available to the
communist George Oppen as it is to the British spy in </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span
  style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Persia</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>, Basil Bunting. At the same time, I
think it is clear also that form itself makes an argument, that rhyme is a
figure for order, that narrative &#8211; and I mean the kind of vulgar narrative that
enables Logan to refer to his parents&#8217; &#8220;rusty prewar love&#8221; as if there were
nothing more to their lives than an endless string of clichés &#8211; that narrative
exists through the suppression of difference, divergence, anomaly. It is how
one uses <span class=GramE>these forces that interests</span> me far more than
the forces themselves. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>In that
sense, it is impossible to imagine the trope of Logan&#8217;s mother &#8220;a brunette,
hurried in her cloth coat / through postwar Sundays, which fell / as they were
meant to fall, too slowly&#8221; as intending anything other than the guffaw it
provokes, a <a href="http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/"><span class=SpellE>Bulwer-Lyttonism</span></a>
of the spirit, as though film director Ed Wood had reincarnated as a poet. It&#8217;s
funny precisely because it doesn&#8217;t mean to be. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>There is an
entire worldview tucked into a phrase like <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>as
they were meant to fall</i>. Meaning is positioned, but agency is invisible.
Right order is something that existed in the past. The narrative, by
definition, must be one of decline. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>What are
the values in a specific act of writing? Is </span><st1:City><st1:place><span
  style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Logan</span></st1:place></st1:City><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'> deliberately rendering his parents
pathetic in hopes that we will sympathize with poor him to have been raised by
such sad, inept people? There is something lurid, even pornographic in this
exhibitionism of dysfunctionality and it is worth asking how it might fit into
a larger program that actively argues the necessity of critics, such as Logan
himself, to inform us as to what is or is not good. Even more disturbing is its
presence in <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>The Nation, </i>ostensibly
the journal of record of the American left. </span><st1:City><st1:place><span
  style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Logan</span></st1:place></st1:City><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'> also appeared in that journal on </span><st1:date
Month="6" Day="14" Year="2001"><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>June
 14, 2001</span></st1:date><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>,
in which he compared a lover to &#8220;The Globe,&#8221; complete with &#8211; I promise I&#8217;m not
making this up &#8211; &#8220;intuitive seas&#8221; and &#8220;rocky spine.&#8221; <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>My point is
that any attempt to correlate poetry &amp; value, especially political value,
ethics, appears headed for a complete garble. We do the polis in <span
class=SpellE>diff&#8217;rent</span> voices. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<h2 class='date-header'><span>Monday, October 13, 2003</span></h2>

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<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Next
weekend I will be participating in a retreat with some 34 other poets, having
conversations around a variety of topics in a setting freed of the performance
criteria of conferences &amp; seminars. I have some experience with retreats,
having been to quite a few job-related ones over the decades, my favorite being
those at the California Institute of Integral Studies, a grad school in </span><st1:City><st1:place><span
  style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>San Francisco</span></st1:place></st1:City><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'> where I served as the director of
development in the early 1980s. We might go to Wilbur Hot Springs, a most funky
resort up a long dirt road on the Southeastern rim of the </span><st1:place><st1:PlaceName><span
  style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Napa</span></st1:PlaceName><span
 style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'> </span><st1:PlaceType><span
  style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Valley</span></st1:PlaceType></st1:place><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'> and just sit around <span
class=SpellE>nekkid</span> in extremely hot water all weekend. I don&#8217;t recall
that we made any momentous decisions, although a couple of marriages got <span
class=SpellE>reswizzled</span> by that process. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>This being
poets, it promises to be a far tamer affair. Participants have been invited to
address a series of six questions (some of which are in fact multiple
questions). I&#8217;m not sure that I have any answers, but I thought I at least
would pose them aloud here over the next few days &amp; see what surfaces. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>The first
question or set of questions was given as follows:<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;
margin-left:.5in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana'>What can a poem do? What is the
sphere of consequence for poems today? Are those consequences limited to established
community circuits? Is public poetic language an oxymoron?</span></b><b
style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:
Arial'><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></b></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Poems can
do what poems do, as Gertrude Stein might put it. <span class=GramE>Which is to
say that the one rule is that they each are responsible for their own rules.</span>
Or, to restore the myth of agency from the poem back to the poet, each poet
with every text is responsible for its rules. <span class=GramE>And thereby any
possible consequence.</span><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>There are
many instances of poetry written in a consciously public language. I think you
can find some exceptionally interesting examples in the work of two quite
underrated poets, albeit underrated for somewhat different reasons, Allen
Ginsberg &amp; Judy Grahn. Interesting precisely because, as I read their work,
their sense of what they were doing vis-à-vis public discourse shifts over the
course of their careers, not always for the good. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>At one
level, Ginsberg &amp; Grahn went through a parallel process of becoming, over a
relatively short period of time, quite famous, going from being relative
unknowns to being taken as oracles by their relative communities. In the
process, the writing of each was transformed. The discursive mode of Allen
Ginsberg, the unknown author of <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Howl, </i>differs
radically from that of Allen Ginsberg, the world famous author of <i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Kaddish. </i>In parallel fashion, the author
of <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>A Woman is Talking to Death </i>or <i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>The Common Woman Poems</i> is nowhere nearly
as oracular as the writer of <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>The Queen of
Wands. </i><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>I have no
doubt that fame must be experienced, at least at first, as stress. For a poet,
there is a sudden recognition that one has many readers and that, unlike the
vast majority of poets, one will know relatively few of these people even
casually. Conversely, the &#8220;knowledge&#8221; of this new broad array of readers is
quite different from that which a poet&#8217;s audience can be <span class=GramE>have</span>
within most poetry scenes or communities. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>There were,
and are, multiple important differences between the Ginsberg of <i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Kaddish</i> &amp; the Grahn of <i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>The Queen of Wands. </i>Perhaps the most
visible is that Grahn was by 1982 a far more mature poet than the Ginsberg of
the late 1950s. Ginsberg&#8217;s fame came at first less from the poem or collection <i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Howl </i>than it did from the trial over the
book&#8217;s alleged obscenity. In short, Ginsberg became famous exceptionally
quickly. Grahn, on the other hand, had been working for two decades to invent
what amounted to a new mode of writing, explicitly by and for women. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>The best
way to see this, I think, is to contrast the language each poet uses in some of
their early work. If we might draw a connection between the use of parallel
constructions in the second &#8220;Moloch&#8221; section of Ginsberg&#8217;s <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:
normal'>Howl </i>or the &#8220;I&#8217;m with you in </span><st1:City><st1:place><span
  style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Rockland</span></st1:place></st1:City><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>&#8221; third section to Grahn&#8217;s use of
the same device in <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>She Who</i>, there is
nothing in Ginsberg&#8217;s writing before <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>The
Fall of America </i>that can come close to <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>A
Woman is Talking to Death, </i>one of the most complex &amp; subtle works of
the early 1970s. In it, Grahn demonstrates a unique ability to employ a public
discourse using what is clearly personal language starting with a tale of a
fatal motorcycle accident on the </span><st1:place><st1:PlaceType><span
  style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Bay</span></st1:PlaceType><span
 style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'> </span><st1:PlaceType><span
  style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Bridge</span></st1:PlaceType></st1:place><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Kaddish </span></i><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>can I think be read as an attempt to
achieve something very similar, but to my mind it is not successful. Ginsberg
deploys exactly the same devices he used previously in <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:
normal'>Howl </i>to confront the many issues of his own mother&#8217;s troubled life.
This is not to say that the work is not filled with compassion and some
beautiful moments of writing, but it also reaches a level of overwriting,
particularly in section IV, that makes me cringe. It&#8217;s the clearest example of
using an inappropriate strategy in writing I can recall.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Ginsberg&#8217;s
next two books identify travel as a key issue in their subtitles: <i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Planet News: To Europe in Asia</i>, and <i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>King of the May: </i></span><st1:country-region><st1:place><i
  style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:
  Arial'>America</span></i></st1:place></st1:country-region><i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:
Arial'> to </span></i><st1:place><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span
 style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Europe</span></i></st1:place><i
style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:
Arial'>. </span></i><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>While
Ginsberg was making a transition from the Beat oracle of the 1950s into
something akin to the father figure of the hippie movement in the 1960s, he did
so while being away much of the time. Even if he was periodically feted, for
example as Kral Majales, the King of the May, much of this travel was away from
the public eye &amp; proved an opportunity for Ginsberg to reestablish a sense
of personal writing. It is this voice that we hear in what will be his finest
poem &amp; certainly his finest &#8220;public&#8221; poem, &#8220;</span><st1:City><st1:place><span
  style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Wichita</span></st1:place></st1:City><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'> Vortex Sutra.&#8221;<span
style='mso-spacerun:yes'>&#160; </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>One can
trace this dynamic out in the work of other poets from the same period &#8211; Olson,
for example, or Duncan in the antiwar sections of <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:
normal'>Passages</i>. And while it may be a voice that is absent altogether
from some tendencies of the New American poetry, such as the </span><st1:place><st1:PlaceName><span
  style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>New York</span></st1:PlaceName><span
 style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'> </span><st1:PlaceType><span
  style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>School</span></st1:PlaceType></st1:place><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>*, as well as individual poets such
as </span><st1:PersonName><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Robert
 Creeley</span></st1:PersonName><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>,
it does seem to be a possibility for some writing some of the time. One of the
most powerful recent examples would be &#8220;The Dust,&#8221; </span><st1:PersonName><span
 style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Michael Gottlieb</span></st1:PersonName><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>&#8217;s catalog of the component elements
of the ash that fell from the </span><st1:place><st1:PlaceName><span
  style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>World</span></st1:PlaceName><span
 style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'> </span><st1:PlaceName><span
  style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Trade</span></st1:PlaceName><span
 style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'> </span><st1:PlaceType><span
  style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Center</span></st1:PlaceType></st1:place><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Arial'>* Anne
Waldman&#8217;s <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Fast Speaking Woman </i>owes
far more to her interest in the Beat scene &amp; the work of Mary Sabina than
in the work, say, of Ashbery or O&#8217;Hara. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<b>October</b><br /><br />Madrid<br />with Charles Bernstein & Susan Bee<br /><br />Barcelona<br /><div><br /><br />Saragossa?<br /><br /><b>November</b><br /><br />Rome?<div><br /></div><div><br /></div></div>
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<li><a href='http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/1544'>Academy of American Poets</a></li>
<li><a href='http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/silliman'>Electronic Poetry Center</a></li>
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<li><a href='http://www.pcah.us/the-center/grants-awarded/grantees-1998-ron-silliman/'>Pew Fellowships in the Arts</a></li>
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<li><a href='http://ronsillimanbibliography.blogspot.com/'>Silliman's Bibliography</a></li>
<li><a href='http://www.spdbooks.org/Search/Default.aspx?AuthorName=Ron+Silliman'>Small Press Distribution</a></li>
<li><a href='http://eclipsearchive.org/projects/TOTTELS/'>Tottel's</a></li>
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<a href="http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/10742.php">I: The Age of Huts<br /><br /></a>             <a href="http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/10742.php"><img src="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/images/lh6.googleusercontent.com/proxy/u_VsYLU9NS_tJXOrl6A4RM1Dne7QkuSslpBc0StgKSXXoIDStYoXqSwDo2tuxST00QD3ynVJH4yjAhcEzTWyM0F_RriCRx9yZdyygceY2wm-%3Ds0-d" /></a><br /><br /><br />II: Tjanting<br /><br /><a href="https://www.saltpublishing.com/products/tjanting-9781876857196"><img src="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/images/lh4.googleusercontent.com/proxy/efy1lIcVIKeKSdy_WUDIxV8WLN0OJmA3f7enQ2XDwxwt7Bh5ssfQQAkW_o4oG6FqrB1RGf7CX-Rw-VQ4u36RIuwSsCMxWjjHFDP4c7CbW2d_%3Ds0-d" /></a><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://www.uapress.ua.edu/product/Alphabet,1897.aspx">III: The Alphabet<br /><br /></a><a href="http://www.uapress.ua.edu/product/Alphabet,1897.aspx"><img id="ctl00_MainContent_ProductInfo1_ctl00_PrimaryImage_PrimaryImage" onclick="javascript:window.open(&#39;http://www.uapress.ua.edu//images/temp/212-1897-Product_LargeToMediumImage.jpeg&#39;, 1, &#39;resizable=1, width=500, height=700&#39;)" src="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/images/lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/OnaMjXm2h6XxneM04RgHx1Bkf2Wi9UE3a8c3o0NDvW5wXo7BK3MaM5VP9YfbEIpHYxAstTorwhNW4lhhkNuua5bDX7Ogr2UgZ1NMDDjeh-0bNnuo-WH-9pGHIR6lv-4-_UDHVNe36xB6%3Ds0-d" style="border: 1px solid Gray;" /></a><br /><div><br /></div><div>IV. from Universe</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>
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<h2 class='title'>Other Books in Print</h2>
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<span style="font-weight: bold;">MEMOIRS &amp; COLLABORATIONS</span><br /><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Leningrad-American-Writers-Soviet-Union/dp/1562790056">Leningrad</a><br /><a href="http://www.thegrandpiano.org/">The Grand Piano</a><br /><a href="https://www.saltpublishing.com/products/under-albany-9781844710515">Under Albany</a><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">CRITICISM</span><br /><a href="http://www.spdbooks.org/Producte/0937804207/the-new-sentence.aspx">The New Sentence</a><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">ANTHOLOGY</span><br /><a href="https://secure.touchnet.com/C22921_ustores/web/classic/product_detail.jsp?PRODUCTID=327&SINGLESTORE=true">In The American Tree</a><br /><br /><br /><br />
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<br /><img alt="" src="file%3A///Users/Lynn/Desktop/silliman2a.jpg" / /><img alt="" src="file%3A///Users/Lynn/Library/Caches/TemporaryItems/moz-screenshot.png" / /><span style="color: #990000; font-weight: bold;">RON SILLIMAN</span> has written and edited 40 books, and had his poetry and criticism translated into 16 languages. Silliman was a 2012 Kelly Writers House Fellow, the 2010 recipient of the Levinson Prize from the Poetry Foundation, a 2003 Literary Fellow of the National Endowment for the Arts, a 2002 Fellow of the Pennsylvania Arts Council, and a 1998 Pew Fellow in the Arts. Silliman has a plaque in the walk dedicated to poetry in his home town of Berkeley and a sculpture in the Transit Center of Bury, Lancaster, a part of the Irwell Sculpture Trail. He lives in Chester County, Pennsylvania and teaches at the University of Pennsylvania.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />(c) 2002-2019 by Ron Silliman.
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